After spending most of the morning on the Island of Mainau, we headed back to the car and drove over the border into Switzerland! My brother-in-law Joachim wanted me to see Rheinfall, which [in my opinion] is the Niagara Falls of Switzerland. Beautiful!
After breakfast we cleared out of the apartment and headed back to Lake Konstanz. Joachim took us to the Isle of Mainau, aka “The Island of Flowers”. It was amazing! The whole island is a botanical garden, and in the center is an enclosed butterfly garden. I could have stayed there for a week.
On Tuesday of my trip to Germany we drove to Singen to visit the ruins of Hohentwiel castle. It’s the largest castle ruin in Germany. Then it was off to visit my nephew and his family on the edge of Lake Konstanz, and finally back to Singen for a comfortable stay at a rental apartment.
I arrived in Germany in the afternoon of September 8th. I was so tired that it was an early night for me. On my first full day in Germany my family took me to Ulm to see the Münster [tallest church in the world] and to eat some delicious Swabian food.
I spent all of last week in Germany visiting my German family. It was awesome. More about that trip in later posts. On the way over, I had a 7 hour layover in Copenhagen. I took the metro from the airport to Kongens Nytorv and went on a one hour boat tour of the canals.
I love seeing the Gold Dust Day Geckos on the Big Island. They’re everywhere! But they’re very hard to find on Maui and Oahu, and nearly impossible on Kauai. According to sciencing.com, “In 1974, a student at the University of Hawaii released eight gold dust day geckos, a native of Madagascar, into the Upper Mano Valley [of the Big Island].”
Originally this post was named “The Worst Day in Hawaii!” to go with my “The Best Day in Hawaii!” post. However, in the weeks since we left, Kauai and Oahu have been hit with record flooding and devastating mudslides, and the Big Island has endured earthquakes and CRAZY volcanic eruptions! So many people have been displaced with no homes to go back to 🙁 So in retrospect, our day really wasn’t all that bad.
After a week of trials and tribulations, we finally had an absolutely wonderful day on the Big Island! Thanks 100% to KapohoKine Adventures 🙂 One of the things on our must do list was see lava. And since we couldn’t see it by boat and couldn’t hike to it, that meant driving back to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
Jim and I spent 10 days on the Big Island of Hawaii at the end of March into April. This was our 5th trip to Hawaii and our 2nd trip to the Big Island. It became such a comedy of errors that my coworker Lauri dubbed it the “Brady Bunch Curse” trip!
We pretty much did nothing on Day 9, and on Day 10 hubby packed [it takes me 10 minutes to pack, it takes hubby about 4 hours] while I went on a 2 hour photo shoot around the hotel grounds.